‘County Charts New Economic Course’ (Chronicle, Feb. 9) identifies several issues I experienced prior to moving to Homosassa. I previously lived in a Southwest Florida city and was a member of the business community and Economic Development Committee. As with Citrus County, we were trying to improve jobs and diversify our economy. The original committee was similar to what is being proposed but with some differences,
The city council member was a non-voting member of the committee. This was done to ensure a vote by the committee was separate from the city commission. It also allowed the city commissioner independence once a proposal came forward for city funding or to prevent a potential violation of Florida Sunshine laws.
We found the state college and technical college needed to have a representative since we needed their support for training both skills and operational.
We found that we had to concentrate on four to six locations within the city to foster different types of industry or businesses for zoning and minimize local resident opposition to having these businesses in or near residential areas that created political fights or generated delays. Land usage and zoning became critical to minimize time to build, train and support businesses.
Manufacturing was of course a major factor since this is one of the higher paying industries and creates various indirect jobs. But we looked at what was required and found that most companies did not want to enter a city without trained people and supporting businesses. This meant we needed to develop warehousing and supply chain businesses that could get parts, store materials and purchase supplies and equipment needed by manufacturers. Warehousing and supply chain turned out to be the first step. The local technical college could establish training in truck drivers, forklift, basic inventory control and warehouse procedures. We determined what was needed. A basic curriculum and a way to transition people from warehouse to state college to become supervisors and improve skills. These skills included bills of material, scanning equipment, cycle count, etc. Then college for computer skills, business and accounting knowledge plus logistics management.
We got small and medium manufacturers to identify skills they needed and provide some funds and equipment to train machinists and maintenance personnel.
However, we received pushback from the School Board on training because it would cost money and their belief was warehousing was being automated so this was wasted skills training. This ended up stopping training, whereas, we determined that those skills were needed now and by setting up future extension programs we could train people to be maintenance personnel for robotics, improve skills for existing systems and have future programs in computer inventory management, logistics and tractor trailer and container storage and movement.
One of the other issues is good roads and highways to move material quickly. The new Sunshine Parkway fulfills this in Citrus County where cheaper warehouses can be located here and trucking north and south can be moved quickly as population increases and moves north into Levy County and beyond.
We had support of the city commission, but then everything we worked on was mostly stopped due to opposition from some local residents. They did not want industry in their neighborhood so elected a new city commission which believed that seniors on retirement were more important and lost support for economic development except items seniors would want such as restaurants and tourist items not industry.
We also found that impact fees were a major issue with some businesses. We got several large developers to widen a major street to Interstate 75 by having them build the road and we gave them credits for building the road five to seven years before FDOT would provide funding and we waived impact fees on new homes and commercial buildings that got the road widened at a lower cost than if we waited and eliminated major traffic issues.
There were other potential programs such as working with the college and technical college in getting a culinary arts program and hotel management program with a restaurant and hotel run by students and teachers and professional hotel company managers to enhance experience in hospitality sciences and create new restaurant entrepreneurs. A major hotel company was very interested but unfortunately if fell through.
Finally, we determined that reduction in impact fees would be given to businesses that would build where we already had utilities: electric, water and sewer, cable and roads complete. Thereby, getting businesses to build in our city rather than in other places and reduced the amount of utility work necessary to meet business and residential requirements even though developers had to put in utilities for their home developments. This was not new, we stole the idea from another county but why reinvent the wheel when you can enhance it.
Unfortunately, we did not learn some of the lessons early enough. We had one city commissioner who came from the “rust belt” and did not like the idea of industry coming, but wanted more of a retirement community. She did not believe modern manufacturing is clean. She helped a group of residents elect two new city commissioners and all our work went down the drain. Several businesses that were considering moving into the city or expanding facilities were told by these commissioners they did not want this type of business or tried to direct where and how the companies would do business.
Fortunately, a few of the ideas were partially accomplished but the Economic Development Committee was restructured by the majority of the “not in my backyard” commissioners and changed focus to environmental and social issues.
There are a number of other initiatives and areas that could be discussed but this is a start. The key is to have people with vision and practicality on the committee. Not just business and politicians, while they are important, college and VoTech specialists, people with legal and accounting skills and some homeowner association members or at least added to various discussions while not part of the membership to gain insight after an initial idea is proposed. A wide range of knowledge to enhance the overall perspective and to look at the pro’s and con’s early in the discussion, minimizes failure by concentrating on those items with the greatest overall support.
If the Citrus County Commission does not fully embrace economic development and are not willing to provide some funding and approve a plan with 1-, 5-, 10-year milestones and commitments this push by the current commission will not survive.
